Adding in breakfast really is that important. Lean people eat breakfast.

Why is that?

Well, it’s funny how the name breakfast, if you dissect it, says BREAK-FAST. Basically, all night while sleeping, you were fasting. You weren’t eating or drinking. When you wake up, you may not feel hunger right away because of that. So, you need to break-the-fast…introducing, BREAKFAST!

Why you want to want to eat breakfast:

It speeds up your metabolism. That should really be reason enough. But, why this works is, digestion is part of the fat burning process. When your body is digesting, it’s burning calories to break down the food. So, it makes sense that if we eat more often, we will burn more calories. Another factor is that when you eat often, you eat smaller meals because you’re not “famished” and so it keeps the metabolism machine whirring in a nice and speedy fashion, rather than slowing down from overeating and reacting by being sluggish. Also when you skip meals (breakfast included!) you slow your metabolism because your body goes into a ‘famine’ mode and holds onto any calories coming in next, assuming it may not get more calories very soon. This causes your body to hoard the calories rather than use them up quickly to fuel your body. This is how some people who hardly eat anything at all can still be overweight. Their body is in fear mode!

Cast aside the fear and let’s have some fun! Eating often is fun and you don’t have to feel guilty about it! If you break your day into 6 small meals, you’ll speed up your metabolism pretty quickly.

Make it a new goal to eat within one hour of waking, and then eventually move that down to eating within 30 minutes of waking. Ideally, the sooner you eat, the better.

What to eat when you aren’t hungry:

If you’re struggling with appetite early in the morning hours, then an egg and cheese sandwich on a whole wheat bagel might not be appealing to you. Ease into it with a smoothie. Then you can sip on that slowly and not overwhelm your system. Understand that you will still possibly feel a little uncomfortable even drinking just a smoothie, but your digestive system will adjust. Give it time, it is worth it.

Here’s a favorite smoothie of mine:

FIRST OFF: you should “break-the-fast” with the water first principle! Always, always drink 16 ounces of water immediately on rising before you drink anything else, especially coffee. I drink coffee, (love it, mwuah!) but never one sip before I’ve flooded my system with water.

BONUS: handful of fresh spinach leaves (if this is a new idea, just try it! You cannot even taste the spinach when it’s fresh and it adds greens, vitamins and minerals to your system without even trying. It’s like free antioxidants and counts as a serving of veggies for your day.)

Personally, I can easily drink this, but if you’re still training your G.I. track to handle food this early, then sip on this through a straw all morning while you’re getting ready.

Ladies’ recommended serving is just half of these awesome Kookies (because they’re HUGE!) and fellas, you get to eat the whole thing. My young son loves these things, so you can guarantee they don't taste like cardboard cookies. Enjoy! This is a meal that you can grab running out the door and eat in the car, so there’s just no reason to ever leave the house without eating something. You only get one body and some people don’t take as good care of their bodies as they do of their cars!

Hopefully the above ideas can help you see that making breakfast a part of your routine isn’t as hard as you might have thought.

Remember, we must fuel our bodies right away when we wake up and every 2.5-3.5 hours after that no matter how long we are awake if we don’t want a sluggish metabolism. This is good news because it means that we can eat more to lose more!

Heather Hudson has been with 9Round since inception in 2008 and is COO and Co-Founder of 9Round Franchising. She is a black belt in Shotokan Karate and grew up with a passion for fitness and overall wellness.